The long walk & Mandela nowhere to be seen

I am sure Nelson Mandela wouldn’t have minded me plagiarising the tile of his auto biography, “Long Walk to Freedom” in my view a book everyone should read.

Anyhow, one of the (then unknown) drawbacks of our anchorage is that it is out in the middle of nowhere with not a lot else.

We are anchored in the bay with the green dot upper right and the town you can see is center bottom

There are no shops, no tavernas and the only distraction is willy watching, if you are that way inclined, we are parked just off one of Paros’s Naturist Beaches.

I did all this in the 80’s when I ran a youth hostel in the south of Crete, but there I was accompanied in the main by young Scandinavian & German ladies. This beach, unfortunately however, seems to have a dearth of such, favouring mainly the other gender. At sundown there are some interesting Ugandan Relations as Private Eye called them going on in the bushes.

Well the forecast was correct the following was an excerpt from the Greek weather warnings:

NEWS
High winds wreaking havoc with island ferry connections
[InTime News]
Newsroom
07.09.2021 • 08:33
Strong winds left dozens of ferry boats tied up at port early on Tuesday morning, with the islands of the Aegean cut off from the mainland as wind speeds reached 8-9 Beaufort at sea.
Ferries at the capital’s main port of Piraeus were not sailing for the islands of the Cyclades or the Dodecanese, but only for the Argonsanic. The picture is similar in Rafina, east of Athens, where ferries bound for the Cyclades and Marmari remain tied up, while the nearby islands of Kythnos and Kea could not be reached from Lavrio, in southeast Attica, either.

What this meant in practice was that,  for the very high wind days, one of us would stay on the boat & the other would head into Naoussa Town some way away for a wander & provisions. You can see from the Google photo the distance involved.

Still good to get off the boat though!

The long walk in and the beaches approching Naoussa– the arrow in the picture is Camira and that is only half way.

Naoussa was originally a little fishing village that has expanded into a tourist resort. It’s very chic with many samey boutique shops competing for business in the old winding alleyways.

There is old Venetian fishing harbour with great protection for the fishing boats and new “Marina” that affords little protection. On the day Louise walked in she witnessed lots of ill at ease crews up on deck as they were bounced around inside the marina.

Naoussa town & fishing harbour

The old Venetian harbour, Naoussa

On my “day in” I had managed to cultivate 6 blisters before I had even got half way . In addition to a backpack full from the supermarket I had bought two 6 packs of water. I was knackered by the time I returned.  A Greek guy on a scooter on my way back took pity on me and took the two big packs of water leaving them by a wall farther up the road for me.  Louise had been even luckier getting a lift back all the way with two Belgian girls.

My fuelling stop at the last chance taverna for a couple of  Alpha’s before heading back.

On the day I dropped Louise on the beach I nearly capsized the dinghy on the way back to the boat trying to start the engine and pirouetting in the waves. Louise had met people off another boat in the bay and they were all hysterical on the beach watching me.

Initially they had invited us onto their boat but rather Louise invited Amir, Mei, and their kids Ronni & Noam from Israel back onto our boat that evening – Mei was only out for a holiday for a couple of weeks and was not keen on the sailing life being a wee bit apprehensive on the boat, and her innability to dinghy ashore herself meant she felt a “prisoner”  (See later blog re Louise……lol), not to mention her lack of facilities.

Now Amir has 1,300 watts of solar power, a full screen TV, fridge & freezer, electric hob, microwave, washing machine, water maker, dishwasher, and a full size plumbed in and tiled shower room with electric water heater – all on a 40 foot yacht !

Louise thought it would be a hoot to show her our facilities, lol.

They are a really nice family and we spent time during our stay on each other’s boats before they left for a night in the marina and then round to Paros town.

On Amir & Mei’s boat

The only picture we have of the actual anchorage in Lageri bay 

A brief lull in the weather gave us a quieter day we both could get off the boat together and we decided to take the bus from Naoussa to Paroikia (Paros Town)

I had to “borrow” Louise’s soft flip flops to accommodate my blisters but still had to stop part way in to wash my feet and put on plasters. The flip flops are now mine!

Happy Feet

The bus only takes about 40 minutes and the return one was at 16:30 perfect gave us time to explore Paros town.

Geese waiting at the bus station – no idea where they were headed though?

We had read about a restaurant with a great write up, used mostly by Greeks and workers on their lunch hour. It did have picnic tables outside so you could “sit in “ turned out fantastic , friendly guy, freshly made food each day and reasonable prices. So after a wander and a drink we headed there for lunch.

Sundry pics Paroika

I have pictures of our wanderings in the picturesque old town but will not include all in this blog because as you will see later, having seen the bay, we decided to sail around and anchor of Paros Town and have pictures from ashore then – so no “doublers” by accident.

Lunch at Lemon E

Not only helping decide to come here it was a very productive day in that we got cat treats, currently running out and rationed, cat litter and Louise got CBD oil to see if it would improve the terrible time she is having with her back. Let’s hope its not the same as the muffin she had in Amsterdam.

On the return we discovered a bus connection that would take us part way back to the anchorage saving us a lot of walking – just as well we were loaded up with a trip to the supermarket, again!

Back at the bus station waiting for our connection, I wonder if the geese had enjoyed their wild day out?